I’m going to Ottawa tomorrow to see my Mom and my Auntie Lori both get their Governor General Awards in Visual Art. There’s a lot of people getting them because they have to get through all the people who won them during the pandemic. So it should be a time. I think it’s a luncheon. I hope they have fancy sandwiches. Or something! I’m gonna wear my suit for the first time. Although I wore it for a documentary, but only because they specifically asked me to wear the suit. BUT this will be my first official event wearing it. I also am gonna have to spend some time Friday morning learning how to tie a tie again. I meant to learn and practice (and I have done it a few times in my life) but I didn’t practice. Because to be honest other things seemed more pressing. But now I will probably look a little lopsided in the photos. Unless I get it perfectly, you never know.

Side note of fun thing before I get into sad things: I’ve been noticing this cool thing when I touch my nipples where they are still numb but the memory of what my nipples felt like just comes to mind, so it kind of helps feel like there is sensation. Like a ghost sensation! It’s not an actual physical sensation, it’s more like a memory of a sensation. But it’s nice, I hope someday to feel more but also hope lovers don’t stay away from them because it could help me reconfigure the way I feel in my body. If that makes sense.

I’m doing a lot of internal processing about my life and also the things happening in the world and also concerns about friends of mine and their safety. Every time I open Instagram there’s some new sad video from Gaza that breaks my heart in a new way. Today I saw a video of a mother holding her small dead son and saying she had 580 injections to have him. It was heart-wrenching. I only did one round of IVF and that was so hard on my body and emotions, I can’t imagine going through that so many times and then finally having a long sought after child only to have him be murdered by a brutal war. And this was just one video today, there’s so many other videos of so many other heartaches, thousands and thousands.

AND I watched a report about sexual violence and murder on Oct 7th and that was brutal too. You can look it up if you want but the details are really disturbing so be warned. I feel a responsibility to be conscious of the events which lead to all this. And yeah I know there’s a long history of occupation behind this as well so the events go way back. But if I was a survivor or close to someone who died or was assaulted or kidnapped in that attack I think I would be really upset at how there wasn’t really space to grieve it before all kinds of hellish things started happening to the other side. None of it has been okay.

AND ALSO just the two sides thing is weird because so many other countries are involved in this situation, like Canada itself supports Israel and I really criticize that because this bombing is relentless and genocidal. I know some people don’t like the words genocide or colonialism but it does look like that from my position as the survivor of a long range genocidal and colonial project. But really like why is Canada supporting this? (And side note why did we send military gear to Saudi Arabia a while back?) Why are we totally enabling brutal war crimes and repression? I know the real answer is that those are Canadian values according to how our government operates. Like yeah we pretend to be a polite country but there’s also military and police repression of Indigenous activists here. So it’s not an innocent country. Not to mention what our mining companies do abroad.

And I also see that there are things governments of countries want, and things their citizens want, and those things are often not aligned. And we have this pretence of democracy but really governments aren’t going to listen to their citizens, they are listening to larger forces like war profiteers who have good lobbyists and fossil fuel CEOs who give money to their campaigns and so on. It’s just frustrating. We’re also at this point in history where large quantities of money are concentrated into a small group of people, some of whom have batshit ideas like Elon Musk and his exploding cars and his “let’s not have safety glass” decisions.

AND it probably sounds so weird but really I’m just thinking fuck this would be the worst time ever to go manic.

I haven’t been manic since 2007, unless you count the mild hypomanias I’ve had which were just me being unusually happy. BUT MANIA omg. First thing of all is that I almost always try to start a revolution when I am manic, and that just ends up a big mess. Especially because no one wants to follow a revolutionary who is getting messages from pop songs and the television. Or I don’t know maybe they do now. Maybe people just want someone to take the wheel because Jesus isn’t cutting it. Ha ha omg. NO really though I am often embarrassed afterwards by my manifestos and all that ephemera from mania. I once had a burning where I burned all my stuff from my first mania. AND THEN three months later I was manic so yeah. Made more memories! Wheee!

But so far so good, haven’t been manic, going to sleep at a reasonable hour, I’m not sending tons of emails to people. I haven’t tracked down exes to send them mix tapes or whatever. I am being responsible and trying to stay aware of current events and hopefully not spin off into another world much to the chagrin of my friends and family. I have never had a psychosis in Toronto and I really hope I don’t. It’s just that people look at you different, or sometimes they think you’re like, forever broken and always gonna be manic. But really it usually resolves with meds and an unfortunate long depression. But being depressed AND embarrassed by all the things that happen while manic is a horrible feeling.

So yeah, trying to stay sane right now which I feel is something most of us are feeling. It’s a very distressing time. And then the rise of Islamophobia and Antisemitism is extremely disturbing. That war is far from Canada and yet it really is impacting people here. And also I just think about white supremacists and how much they must love this moment and how much recruiting they are trying to do. I’m trying to be more conscious of things I share on social media because I don’t want to share straight up propaganda for either side. I don’t know, I know things are going in a really bad direction and I have a lot of friends who are more directly affected by antisemitism and Islamophobia that I want to keep safe. I also think about how activists are getting criminalized here in Toronto specifically but also broadly in the world.

I’ve been called an activist. I don’t know if I feel like one. I think I have Opinions but I don’t know if they are helpful. They’re really not helpful here except now you know how fucked up I feel by this situation. I do know I have a bit of a public figure standing which means more people hear my Opinions. But it’s just hard for me, I am a questions person more than an answers person. And hopefully other people have answers but I really don’t, except that there should be a ceasefire and Palestinians deserve to stay in their lands. I do not have answers about how to resolve this though, it’s bigger and older than me.

I’ve been talking with my therapist about it all and she helped me get some new perspectives. Which I appreciate.

I just want a kinder more just world. And some days that seems very out of reach.

Anyway tomorrow I am going to Ottawa to see my Mom and my Auntie get their awards, and wear a suit, and maybe I can shake my fist at Parliament Hill as we go past it. My dog has a friend coming to stay with her. I’m generally safe and secure and warm and things do generally work out for me. I got a Toronto Art Council grant to make a video about my transition and how political things have gotten around trans people. So that’s good, I feel supported by my community. I have another grant I am working on now, and am going to hear from another grant next year. Just a lot of struggle trying to get my money situation back in a good place. I’ve been dodging calls from CRA but I have to call them next week and make a payment plan again. Being responsible! Ugh. How did I become an adult?